Moralia in Job 24

Argument. — 1. The objections drawn from Gregory's Letters are dissolved. — 2. Reply is made to the other objection. — 3. Whether a monk promoted to the clerical state is no longer called a monk, in the usage of Saint Gregory. — 4. Monks were formerly commonly called clergy. — 5. Whether Saint Gregory instituted canons regular. John the Deacon is explained. — 6. Whether the common life indicates rather a canon than a monk. — 7. The genuine sense of John the Deacon's objected words is established. Whether all clergy who live according to the canons are to be numbered among the canons regular. — 8. On the distinction between secular and regular canons. — 9. A new fabrication concerning Saint Augustine's companion monks, never ordained. — 10. Laurence and the others of Saint

Augustine's associates were all monks. — 11. Concerning the presbyters of Arles who followed Augustine, another fiction. — 12. Gregory's reply to Augustine is explained. — 13. The testimony of Urban II is weighed. — 14. The decree of Boniface IV for monks discharging ecclesiastical offices. — 15. His letter for the monks serving in the Church of Canterbury. Ill understood by the recent writer. 1. Two letters of Saint Gregory are opposed to us. In the former, which is the first of the fourth book, it is read: No one can both serve ecclesiastical offices and persist in orderly fashion in the monastic rule, etc. Therefore, once Augustine's companions had been admitted into the clergy, it was not permissible for them to retain the monastic institutes.

To this passage answer has already been made many times, both by our Mabillon and by ourselves, book II, chapter 12, § 11, and in the notes to this letter, where we have opened up the genuine sense of those words. Yet to what has already been said it must be added that we most willingly admit that monks who serve certain ecclesiastical offices—such as the assiduous preaching of the divine word, the administration of the sacraments, the governance of churches—and those things which Gregory signifies by these words: He who is daily compelled to remain in the service of the Church, cannot to the exact line observe more strictly all the institutes of the monastic rule, in silence, vigils, fasts, and other like things; which is, in Gregory's phrase, to keep the strictness of the monastery.

Whence abbots and other prefects of monasteries, upon whose word and example depends all the vigour of regular observance, cannot at once fulfil ecclesiastical duties and preside over monasteries. But other monks, if they bear the care of churches and congregations, may be compelled to relax somewhat of the rigour of discipline. But what forbids one to say the same either of canons regular—especially of a stricter and narrower observance, such as still flourishes among the Reformed Premonstratensians—or of their prefects? Shall anyone therefore dream that they cannot at once discharge the office of clergy and be assigned to ecclesiastical duties, unless they first bid farewell to the institute of canons regular?

Perhaps, employing a distinction, they will answer that two things are joined in their institute of canons regular: namely the vows, which pertain to the essence of their state, and certain pious ascetic practices, such as to sing psalms in choir at fixed hours, to give attention to reading, prayer, and meditation, to take food in the common refectory, to withdraw from the fellowship of men and to devote oneself to silence, to lie down in the same place and at the same time, etc. And indeed that those who devote themselves either to winning or to governing souls suffer the loss of these; but that the vows remain inviolate. But this same answer will equally serve monks discharging the priestly office, and the solution of the knot which they try to tighten from the former testimony of Gregory. 2.

Let us now come to the latter passage. The holy Doctor, book VII, letter 43, decrees this: If any of the abbots or monks from any monastery whatsoever should proceed to the office of the clericate or to a sacred order, let him have no further power there, as we have said. 'By this very fact that a monk was ordained to sustain the care of the Church, monkhood was taken away,' says the recent writer. A wondrous consequence indeed! As though the power in a monastery, and the monastic state, which consists in obedience and subjection rather than in power and authority, were the same thing. But the aim of Saint Gregory in writing these things we have already shown (above, chapter 3, number 9).

For the rest, that we may set the most certain and unconquerable arguments against things so doubtful—not to say plainly false—let us briefly show, first, that Gregory the Great did not everywhere so separate the clergy from the monk that whoever he had once called a clergyman, that man, by this very fact, whoever he be, is by no means to be reckoned as a monk—which that writer, thinking perhaps of something else, said; secondly, that monks were commonly called clergy also, in the most celebrated writers contemporary with Gregory. 3. Certainly Saint Augustine was already a clergyman, and given to ecclesiastical, nay apostolic, offices, when the most holy master sent him to the conversion of the English.

That he was then at least either a presbyter or a deacon is almost evident, because Gregory, with no mention made of any other order conferred, testifies that he was ordained bishop. Nonetheless he still calls him a monk, writing to Eulogius: While the nation of the English, placed in a corner of the world, remained faithless until now in the worship of woods and stones, it pleased me, from the help of your prayer, that I should, by God's authorship, send a monk of my monastery to it for preaching. Who, licence being given by me, was made bishop by the bishops of the Germanies (Book VIII, letter 30). The same is to be said of Saint Augustine's companions and helpers in the conversion of the English, whom Saint

Gregory, although sent to preach and to apostolic works, never fails to call monks: For, he says, since, with the grace of our Redeemer cooperating, so great a multitude from the nation of the English is being converted to the grace of the Christian faith, that our most reverend common brother and fellow-bishop Augustine asserts that those who are with him cannot suffice for carrying out this work through the various places, we have provided that some monks should be sent to him, together with our most beloved and common sons, Laurence the presbyter and Mellitus the abbot (Book XI, letter 58). The same he repeats even to nausea in other letters written on this matter (ibid., letters 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62).

Shortly we shall hear Boniface IV speaking no otherwise than his predecessor Gregory, in a letter to King Ethelbert: That those very preachers of your salvation, monks, may associate to themselves a flock of monks. Boniface is not ashamed to call monks those preachers, who were doubtless clergy, nay bishops, presbyters, deacons. 4. From contemporary writers let Gregory of Tours suffice us, to show that at that time monks were commonly called clergy. In book I of the Glory of the Martyrs, chapter 76, those who were rendering praises to God in the monastery of Agaunum are indiscriminately called now clergy, now monks.

A certain woman, says Gregory, bringing her only son to this monastery, delivered him to the abbot to be instructed, namely that, being made a clergyman, he might be devoted to holy offices. But when he had already been trained in spiritual letters, and was chanting psalms in the choir of singers with the rest of the clergy, etc. Behold, the Agaunenses are called clergy; but a little further down they are called monks: You will hear his voice among the choirs of chanting monks. And a little after: When the throng of monks took up the antiphon, the mother hears, she recognizes the voice of her little one. The same Gregory, in the book of the Miracles of Saint Julian, chapter 28: But a certain clergyman of Aridius, abbot of Limoges, etc. Many things I omit, in which he relates that this clergyman was by a miracle introduced into the basilica of Saint

Julian's basilica. And he adds: That no one may doubt this, I call to witness Almighty God, that I learned all these things from the mouth of that very abbot, at whose monk they were done. You see here a monk, whom above you read as a clergyman. But conversely, in chapter 35, him whom he had first called a monk, he straightway calls a clergyman. And even though a monk taken up to ecclesiastical cares and dignities were no longer called a monk, yet he would by no means cease to be one—which the learned man contends, but who is almost a stranger in the reading of Gregory the Great.

For since a denomination is derived from the nobler grade, what wonder if someone who puts a bishop, for example, over a monk is no longer called a monk, although he has not laid aside the monk, and perseveres even in the monastic institutes, in vigils, fasts, and prayers? Concerning these matters, which we only touch upon lightly, one should read our Mabillon, both in the Preface to the second Benedictine century, number 27, and in his first reply to the writing of the canons regular concerning the sessions in the assemblies of Burgundy; Hadrian Valesius in his disputation on basilicas, and in its defence; and also Thomassin, in part I, book I, of Ecclesiastical Discipline. 5.

That the learned man, whose arguments we are now weighing, is a great theorizer, no one will deny who has come to weigh them free from all prejudices; which arguments, namely, to propound is to refute, as will become clear from what is presently to be said. It shall not rest with him to keep us persuaded that Gregory the Great instituted canons regular, and afterward decreed that from the same institute clergy should occupy the primary Church of the English founded at Canterbury; and finally that the remaining pontifical sees of England likewise fell to canon-clergy. The first, indeed, he strives to prove from John the Deacon, book II of the Life of Saint Gregory, chapter 12: There seemed, he says,

everywhere to cleave to the pontiff most religious monks together with most learned clergy, and in the diverse professions the common life was maintained: so that the Church then under Gregory in the city of Rome was such as Luke commemorates it to have been under the apostles, and Philo under Mark the Evangelist at Alexandria. Here I acknowledge our Gregory, a cultivator of the monastic life, and most tenacious of his own monastic institute, having monks as table-companions, with whom, occupied day and night, he left behind nothing of monastic perfection in the palace, says John. I see also clergy cleaving to him, who, freely bound by no vows, obligated by no law, led a common life with the monks.

Moreover, as to the institution of the canons regular, of which order St. Gregory is claimed to have been the parent, nothing is read on this point either in this passage, or in any of Gregory's letters or writings. Will clerics, then, the moment they hold a common life and common table, straightway become canons regular? But you will say, along with a learned man, a poet, that I know not who has made mention of an order of canons of the Gregorian kind; therefore Gregory the Great instituted the order of canons regular; and why should we not, he says, name them Gregorian canons for honor's sake? Far be it from us to call the pious and religious men of the Gregorian order 'canons' in the same sense in which they are so called by that poet, who reports that they were cast out of the monastery of St. Walaricus in these words:

'The leader Hugo, presently emptying the temple of the Gregorian order, established the regular rule of monks.' For from the history of the account of St. Walaricus we learn (Mabillon, saec. V) that those canons were secular: 'Then the aforesaid Duke, procuring with great solicitude the place of St. Walaricus, cast out from it the secular congregation, and gathered into it the regular order of monks.' So writes a near-contemporary author, who could not have been ignorant who and of what sort those canons were, cast out of doors like salt that has lost its savor — perhaps called of the Gregorian order for this reason, that in psalmody they followed the Roman order composed by Gregory (not the monastic order such as St. Benedict prescribes), which afterward those who succeeded the canons in St. [Walaricus's church, the Benedictine monks,] observed.

[St.] Walaricus's church, [namely] the Benedictine monks. 6. This deceives a man who is fired with excessive zeal for his own order, that wherever mention occurs of a common life after the manner of the earlier and apostolic Church, he drags it to prove the institution of the canons regular — not considering that the cenobitic and common life of monks was likewise prescribed after the model and rule of that same more ancient Church founded by the apostles, and that in nearly all monastic rules the example of that ancient Church of Jerusalem under the apostles is brought forward. 'Let all things be common to all,' says St. Benedict, 'as it is written (Acts 4), and let no one call anything his own or presume to do so.' And in chapter 34:

'Whether all ought to receive necessaries equally. As it is written, distribution was made to each according as each had need.' Now in this matter nearly all the founders of monastic rules agree with St. Benedict, as may be seen in the 'Concord of Rules,' composed by St. Benedict of Aniane the abbot, chapters 42 and 43; and therefore by a stronger right monks can claim for themselves the testimonies of the ancients concerning the cenobitic and common life. As regards the Church of Alexandria, most flourishing in sanctity under St. Mark, most of the ancients who treated of monastic matters judged that in it, and in the therapeutae of Philo mentioned by John the Deacon, was set forth a pattern of the state and polity of monks, not of canons. 7.

Having exploded the false and fictitious sense of John the Deacon's words, let us now open up the true and genuine one. St. Gregory, who had used monks as his fellow-boarders when he acted as apocrisiarius at Constantinople, so that by their example he might always be held back, as by an anchor's cable, to the calm shore of prayer (Preface to the Moralia), wished to have these same men as his companions after he had been unwillingly seized to the pontificate, and turned his own palace as it were into a kind of monastery, where certain chosen monks sat familiarly by his side. John the Deacon lists six monks distinguished for piety and holiness.

He also names four clerics conspicuous for prudence and learning, whose service and counsel he employed both in the affairs of the Church and in his studies. Moreover, since he had removed all laymen from his bedchamber (which he even decreed by a Roman synod, on his own authority, should thereafter be done by the pontiffs [Decretal 1]), he had summoned certain men indiscriminately from among the clerics and the monks to minister to him. Admiring the unanimity of all these — though in a diverse profession — and their social and common life, John the Deacon did not hesitate to say that in that fellowship and concord there seemed to be, as it were, revived the Churches founded by the apostles at Jerusalem and by St. Mark at Alexandria.

But as for canons regular instituted by Gregory, he did not think of them even in a dream, seeing that there were none either in St. Gregory's times or even in John's. For not even all those clerics who ordered their manners according to the canons and rules of the Church — who, it is agreed, existed from the beginning — are to be reckoned among them, unless they were bound by vows. To be sure, from the eleventh century onward, mention is frequently made of canons regular — who, after the manner of monks, bound by nearly the same vows, lived obedient to their abbots or provosts under strict discipline — in Fulbert, Bernard, Peter of Blois, and other contemporary authors:

we know the origins of abbeys or other monasteries then built for canons of this kind, or the changes of others already existing which passed over to them (for not a few provostships of the Order of St. Benedict were granted to them, among which stands out the most celebrated house of St. Victor at Paris); but concerning these before that century nothing occurs. For the canons of Aachen, or those who followed the rule of Chrodegang, or even of Eugenius II and Leo IV, not only lived free from religious and solemn vows, but also, by the prescription of their rules, held something of their own and of private property — as is admitted by the very advocate of the canons regular whom we are here opposing.

Furthermore, this retention of private property alone, by the very institution of the rule, is so abhorrent to the state of a canon regular that it overturns it and renders him secular. (Cf. Gallia Christiana, Alber. chron. ad an. 1029.) 8. I am indeed aware that the least of distinction between a secular and a regular canon is acknowledged by the author of the 'Disquisitions,' in whom, not without astonishment, I read (chap. 1, art. 2, p. 8):

'For whoever will recall that the Benedictine monks were, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, distributed into the Cluniac order, or the Tironensian, into the order of the Grand Monastery, and into many other orders as well, he will easily understand how at that period the regular order and the secular order of canons could be distinguished and separated from one another, although both ought to have been of one and the same kind.' Whence he infers: 'But neither will any learned man, if he sees regions abounding in secular canons long lacking regular ones, thence draw anything toward charging the canons regular with novelty; otherwise, by a similar argument, one would necessarily conclude that the beginnings of the Benedictine order are to be taken from the Cluniacs or contemporary monks.'

And so, according to the mind of this recent writer, in the order of canons there is no greater distinction between regulars and seculars than in the Benedictine order between Cluniacs, Tironensians, etc., who, since they all followed the master-rule of St. Benedict and were held by the law of the same vows, could be distinguished only by the most minute rites — accidentally, as they say; and thence it follows that there is nothing which separates the regular canonry from the secular as regards essence, to which therefore neither vows nor the institutions of religious life pertain, but which ought to be dismissed as it were among things indifferent (adiaphora), and constitute only the very slightest difference. At this, I confess, I was aghast;

and had not the writer's known piety and that of his associates set me at ease, I would greatly have feared lest perchance by these means a defection and passage to secular canons were being prepared for them, whom the author of the 'Disquisitions' shows to be so close, and separated by scarcely the slightest difference. But I would rather believe that these things slipped from him incautiously, and quite without the counsel of the most religious superiors of his congregation, than press the matter further. These things therefore being passed over, after we have proved that what this writer devised concerning canons regular formed in the Roman Church by Gregory the Great is plainly fictitious, let us weigh whether he divined better when he asserts that these same canons were instituted in the Church of Canterbury by command of the most holy pontiff. 9.

First, indeed, he feigns that, of the monks chosen to procure the conversion of the English, none was ordained or, in Gregory's intention, to be ordained, except Augustine: 'Not yet, that is,' he says, 'was Gregory thinking about the ordination of the monks; he had merely arranged that Augustine was to be ordained their bishop, if they were received by the English' (Book 11, ep. 58 and following). Therefore he sent them not for the preaching of the divine word or for the sacred ministry (which, however, Gregory himself everywhere proclaims, with the agreement of Bede, Boniface IV, the writer of the Life of St. Augustine, etc.), but perhaps for planting vegetables, or for taking care of the kitchen.

For what wise man would take it into his head to send to the apostolic work laymen who were never even to be ordained, especially when there is an abundance of sacred ministers? I do not indeed deny that Augustine alone was chosen by Gregory for the episcopal dignity straightway, while the outcome was still doubtful. But concerning other orders, either not yet conferred or never to be conferred on Augustine's associates, there is deep silence everywhere. Nay, of his monk-helpers, nearly all whom we know became bishops — such as Mellitus of London, Justus of Rochester; on which matter Bede is to be read. 10.

Secondly, it pleases the patron of the canons regular to strike Laurence the priest, one of Augustine's companions, from the number and census of the monks, and to enroll him among his own. But by what right, when St. Gregory, Bede, and the others who speak of them proclaim them all monks? Is it because he was a priest? As though at that time there had existed no priests in monasteries — contrary to what so many of St. Gregory's letters prove. Goscelin in the Life of St. Augustine says that he and his fellow-initiates were torn from the maternal bowels of the monastic Church; and he adds that so many footsoldiers of the Lord's embassy are numbered up to forty — even as Bede relates that they landed on the isle of Thanet.

Therefore no room is left for priests who were not monks, taken either from Italy or from Gaul — not even for the men of Arles, whom the Disquisitor most liberally assigns to his own order, feigning that they brought the canonical religious life to the English Church. The pope had indeed enjoined Augustine and his companions that, for carrying out these tasks, they ought to take priests with them from nearby. But perhaps there was none at hand who was prepared for this embassy and pilgrimage; since Bede teaches (Book 1, ch. 25) that they took interpreters of the Frankish nation, but is altogether silent about priests taken along — which, if it had been done, he would not have concealed. Add that Augustine was compelled to summon new preachers of the divine word from the Roman [monastery of St.] Andrew;

[from the Roman monastery of St.] Andrew, doubtless because in Gaul he had obtained little assistance. 11. Yet grant that certain priests of Arles followed them; why should we not say that they were at the same time monks, and perhaps from among those priests of the monastery of Lérins whom St. Gregory praises? Namely, lest a diversity of profession should, as happens, breed some discord in this holy company, Virgilius bishop of Arles ought to have joined monks with monks — especially since he himself had been a monk of Lérins, as very many of his predecessors had been (Book 6, ep. 56). Let us even grant that some priests in no way bound by monastic laws were joined to Augustine;

what will the learned man draw thence toward proving the institution of canons regular in the Church of Canterbury? As though, indeed, all clerics and priests in those times belonged to their order. Every difficulty, if any should occur, would be removed by the single testimony of venerable Bede cited above. He alone it is who has transmitted to us St. Gregory's response to Augustine's queries concerning the common life to be maintained in the Church of Canterbury; of which he is therefore the legitimate interpreter. But he understood the same of the cenobitic life of monks.

Nor indeed could so diligent and learned a writer, and one nearly contemporary, be ignorant of who and of what sort from the beginning had served God as soldiers in this most renowned Church, the primatial see of the whole English nation — whether clerics or canons regular, or monks; since even now we are not ignorant which cathedral churches, which for three hundred years have passed to secular canons, were of old occupied either by canons regular or by monks. But who, save rashly, would believe that a man conspicuous for holiness wished to feign that no clergy other than monks existed in the Church of Canterbury — a falsehood which anyone born in England could easily have refuted? 12.

Therefore, that we may now gather together what has been said more at length, and interpret from the premises St. Gregory answering Augustine's question (for on the understanding of his response the settlement of this controversy depends). First, St. Gregory wishes his disciple to remember the monastic life which he had professed at Rome in the house of St. Andrew. 'Because,' he says, 'your Fraternity, trained in the rules of a monastery, etc.' Secondly, he exhorts him to lead a cenobitic and common life with his clerics: 'you ought not to live apart from your clerics';

by which name are signified both the monks given him as helpers for preaching and called to a share of the labor, and also the younger clerics whom they were training, as the superiors and administrators of an episcopal seminary. Thirdly, he provides for the sustenance of those clerics who, since they were not established in sacred orders, were permitted to take wives: 'But if there are any clerics constituted outside sacred orders who cannot contain themselves, let them take wives and receive their stipends externally.' 13. Against all these arguments, nay demonstrations, a single testimony of Urban II is objected to us, certainly weighty, and the less to be rejected by the Benedictines because he himself was raised to the supreme pontificate from the [family of] St. [Benedict].

[from the family] of St. Benedict he was raised to the supreme pontificate. He therefore, in a certain letter written to the canons regular, testifies that Gregory had commanded the canonical life to be instituted for Augustine the archbishop of the English — doubtless when he wrote to him that he should live in common with his clerics. Whatever be the case concerning this letter, to which the collectors of councils have not even given a place in the appendix of Urban II's Letters, I answer that by these words there is signified only that St. Gregory, in his response to Augustine, gave a prelude to the instituting of canons regular:

just as (as is read in the same letter of Urban) the apostles, by instituting all things to be common in the Church of Jerusalem, and Urban the pope and martyr by his decrees (which, however, all the learned hold to be spurious), are said to have delineated beforehand the discipline of the canons regular; for what St. Luke writes concerning the Church of Jerusalem cannot properly be understood, by way of example, of the institution of those canons — in which Church, besides apostles, disciples, and clerics, there were married laymen, widows, and women of every age and condition. Certainly not a few of the ancient writers, and not of the lowest rank, judged that the institution of the monastic life should be traced back to Elijah, John the Baptist, and the apostles.

Cassian teaches that Elijah and Elisha founded the first beginnings of this profession (Book 1 of the Institutes, ch. 2), which Jerome also asserts (Epistle 13, to Paulinus). 'The prince of monks is John the Baptist,' says Chrysostom (Homily 1 on Mark), with whom Sozomen agrees (Book 1 of the History, ch. 12). Bernard commends the monastic order, in his Apology to William the abbot, because it was the first in the Church, nay, that from which the Church began, than which none on earth is more like the angelic orders, of which the apostles were the founders, of which those whom Paul so often calls saints were the initiators. Bernard confirms these things by adducing the testimony of Luke (Acts 4) concerning the common life observed by the first disciples of Christ.

We could adduce innumerable passages, whether from the holy Fathers or even from councils, signifying the same thing. Yet not for that reason do we assert that the apostles ever thought of instituting monks, nor do we flatter ourselves with such authorities; we say only that the monastic and cenobitic life was foreshadowed in their examples and institutions, and that this is what the writers cited meant to signify when, for the commendation of monks, they pronounced that they proceeded from and drew their origin from the apostles. So too must be explained what Urban II and others said concerning canons whom they saw pursuing the cenobitic life and emulating monks; and whatever the learned man seeks thence for establishing their antiquity utterly totters.

From what has been said, therefore, it is most plainly clear that in the Church of Canterbury, from its very beginning, monks alone served, not mere clerics. Whence it is permitted to turn this argument back upon the adversary: 'If I shall rightly have adjudged this one see to canonical clerics' — he says (I shall say, to monks) — 'not undeservedly shall I conclude that the remaining pontifical sees of England likewise fell to canonical clerics' (I shall say, to monk-clerics). 14. Since this preeminent authority of monks in the ecclesiastical ministry had stirred up their rivals,

Mellitus, one of Augustine's companions, bishop of London, came to Rome to treat with the apostolic pope Boniface concerning the necessary affairs of the English Church. And when that most reverend pope had convened a synod of the bishops of Italy, to ordain concerning the life and quiet of the monks, Mellitus himself also sat among them... and returning to Britain he brought with him the mandates and observances of the English Church, together with the letters which that same pontiff directed to Laurence the archbishop beloved of God, and to all the clergy, likewise to King Ethelbert and the English nation (Bede, Book 2 of the History, ch. 4). Among the praised mandates, the most celebrated is the Decree which begins thus:

'There are some, propped up by no doctrine (or: there are some foolish in doctrine), inflamed more by a zeal of bitterness than of love, asserting that monks, because they are dead to the world and live to God, are unworthy of the power of the sacerdotal office (or: of the sacerdotal office), etc.' (Vol. 5 of the Councils.) The supreme pontiff refutes them, especially by the examples of Gregory the Great and of his disciple Augustine, who, though monks, shone with the pontifical dignity; and he adds: 'For neither was Benedict, the teacher of monks, in any way a forbidder of this thing.' 15. The letter to King Ethelbert, of which Bede makes mention, we have in the most recent collection of councils, from which it will suffice to transcribe what bears on our purpose:

'Wherefore, glorious son, what you have requested from the apostolic see through our fellow-bishop Mellitus, we grant with willing mind; namely, that your benignity may freely establish in every respect a dwelling of monks living regularly in the monastery constituted in the city of Canterbury, which your holy teacher Augustine, disciple of Gregory of blessed memory, consecrated to the name of the holy Savior, over which at present our most beloved brother Laurence is known to preside: decreeing by apostolic authority that these preachers of your salvation, themselves monks, associate to themselves a flock of monks' (Ibid.). From these things it is clear that the metropolitan church of St. [Savior] was

the metropolitan church of St. Savior was called a monastery from the beginning on account of the monks inhabiting it. Not only, moreover, did the supreme pontiff ratify that this church had been handed over to monks, but he even decreed by apostolic authority that the preacher-monks should associate to themselves other monks, by whom the monastic institution might be propagated to posterity. We do not therefore contend that monks were admitted to the Church of Christ at Canterbury by Boniface's letters — as the patron of the canons regular seems to believe — but that they were confirmed and asserted in the possession of this church by the authority of the same pope.

I would almost say that the advocate of this utterly desperate cause is dreaming, when he feigns that by Boniface's consent or decree monks were joined to canons regular, to complete the daily psalmody while those clerics, whom public utility called elsewhere, might freely discharge every ecclesiastical office. Trifles indeed! as though, forsooth, the earlier preachers and inhabitants of this church were called by Boniface not monks, but clerics; or as though, after what we have said, any trace of clerics-not-monks received from the beginning in the Church of Canterbury should appear. Argument. — 1. The monks of England were from the beginning Benedictines. Whence what has already been said concerning St. Gregory is confirmed, [that he was bound by] the laws of St.

[bound by] the laws of St. Benedict. — 2. The first reason, from Aldhelm. — 3. The second, from the contemporary writer of St. Wilfrid's life. — 4. The third reason, from the ancient litanies, in which the name of St. Benedict was inserted. — 5. The silence of the synod of Clovesho vainly objected to us. — 6. And of venerable Bede. — 7. Another argument, from the rule of St. Benedict carried into Germany by the English monks. — 8. The opinion of the Bollandists on this matter. — 9. Maresham, thinking otherwise, is refuted. 1. The name of St.

The name of St. Benedict, [invoked] by the supreme pontiff Boniface, with the added title of 'teacher of monks' as well — precisely where the tranquility of the English monks was chiefly being treated — offers us no obscure ground for conjecturing that the monks of England were then Benedictines; whether they were the surviving companions of Augustine, or those whom, after legitimate probation, they associated to themselves and to their congregation. But what need is there of conjectures, where so many demonstrations are at hand? Worthy indeed of this name are the reasons which the most learned Mabillon has gathered on this subject, both in the preface to the first century of the Benedictines, § 8; and in the preliminary observations to the Life of St. Wilfrid, in the first part of the fourth century of the Benedictines;

and in the second volume of the Analecta, in the dissertation on St. Gregory's monkhood, part 2, § 8, p. 173 and following; and finally in the Benedictine Annals, Book 10, § 18, and in Appendix 1, p. 655 and following. But it will be enough for our purpose to sample the chief ones; whence it will follow, as we have also already said (Book 1, ch. 3, §§ 3-10), that St. Gregory observed the Benedictine rule and commended it to his followers to be observed. 2. The first is drawn from the indubitable testimony of St. Aldhelm, who, first educated by Hadrian abbot of the monastery of St. Peter at Canterbury, then a monk and abbot in the monastery of Malmesbury among the West Saxons (of whom he was also bishop), in his poem on virginity designates St.

designates St. Benedict with this eulogy: 'The first who established the contests of our life, how monasteries should hold the desired norm, and in what way the saint should hasten by a straight path, climbing to those above, the cultivator of the heights of the heavens; whose illustrious life, from its origin, bishop Gregory had once described in his writings.' Here St. Aldhelm — a monk and abbot, who flourished in the same century in which St. Augustine and his companions led the English to the Christian faith (for he died only in the year 709, as Bede attests) — plainly testifies that Benedict was the first institutor of the monastic life which he himself had professed and which the English monasteries observed. 3. The second reason is supplied by the contemporary writer of the Life of St.

of St. Wilfrid, the contemporary writer Eddius Stephanus, in whom holy Wilfrid speaks thus to the synod convened for his cause: 'Did I not, first after the death of the first magnates sent by St. Gregory, take care to root out the venomous seedlings of the Scottish planting... or how I established the life of the monks according to the rule of St. Benedict the father, which no one before had introduced' (Fourth century of the Benedictines, part 1, in the Appendix); namely, among the peoples beyond the Humber: for that the rule of St. Benedict had already been received in the kingdom of Kent, and thence carried by St. Wilfrid to the monasteries of Northumbria, whether to be established or restored, these words of Eddius (ch. 14) prove:

'Ecgberht too, the religious king of the men of Kent, summoned our pontiff to himself, and there ordained many priests... dear to all, performing episcopal offices over many regions, with the cantors Aedde and Aeona, and the masons... returning to his own region with the rule of Benedict, he greatly improved the institutions of the Churches.' 4. The third reason is sought from the ancient English litanies, which the most learned Mabillon proves to have been composed at least a thousand years ago, and before the eighth century, both from the semi-Saxon characters of a very ancient codex, and especially because in them no saint is invoked or commemorated who is later than the middle of the seventh century;

not Mellitus, not Paulinus, Cuthbert, Wilfrid, Aidan, and very many others, far more illustrious in holiness and doctrine than many of those enumerated in the series of the litanies of the Blessed; who surely would not have been passed over, if they had already closed their last day, and their sanctity had by then become established, as afterward in the eighth century. Now in these litanies the name of St. Benedict is invoked after St. Jerome and before Sts. Hilary and Martin; which is a most valid argument that St. Benedict, among those who used litanies of this kind, held the place of patron: otherwise why should he alone be commemorated, with Pachomius, Antony, Basil, and Columban omitted? Why should he be invoked twice — a thing granted to no other, except St.

except St. Stephen and St. Mary, called upon three times? Furthermore, that those litanies were in use in England — nay, composed for England — this supplication proves: 'That you may deign to preserve the clergy and people of the English, we beseech you, hear us' — no mention being made of any other nation. 5. These things being weighed in an even balance, the silence of the synod of Clovesho and of venerable Bede concerning the Rule of St. Benedict — which was once objected to us by our adversaries — could in no way harm our cause, even if in them no mention were made either of St. Benedict or of the rule promulgated by him. But not even that is permitted us to object; for in the synod of Clovesho it is read:

'In the twenty-fourth chapter it was enacted that, if any of the laity desires to undertake the service of holy profession, let him not receive the habit of the tonsure before his manner of conversation and quality of morals be more manifestly proved according to the definition of the monastic rule, in keeping with the apostolic precept: Prove the spirits, whether they are of God; unless some reasonable cause duly persuade that they be received into the congregation beforehand.' What, I ask, in the middle of the eighth century — the time at which the council of Clovesho was celebrated — was a monastic rule so famous that it was designated simply, and with nothing added, by the name of 'the monastic Rule,' except the rule of St. Benedict, in whose chapter 58 it is read:

Let no one newly come to conversion be granted an easy entrance (1 John 4), but, as the Apostle says: 'Test the spirits, whether they be of God.' Then, after all the rules for the testing and reception of novices have been laid down, there is added: 'And from that day let him be reckoned in the community.' Nor does it seem right to pass over in silence that in both passages St. John, contrary to custom, is called simply 'the Apostle,' a title which by usage is granted to Paul alone; whence one may surmise (even if no other arguments were at hand) that the Synod of Cloveshoo, in praising John under the name of 'the Apostle,' was following the custom of St. Benedict.

As regards the venerable Bede, in the first book of the 'History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow' which he himself composed, we read that St. Benedict Biscop undertook a fourth journey to Rome after he had established a monastery according to the Rule. What Rule does he mean but the Benedictine, since no other was widely propagated in the West? Indeed Bede afterwards clearly designates this very Rule when he reports, at the end of the first book, these words spoken by his abbot in his last address to his disciples: 'Take great care, brothers, that you do not seek a father for yourselves from elsewhere, from outside;'

but according to that which the Rule of the great Abbot Benedict of old prescribes, and according to what the decrees of your privilege contain, seek out in the assembly of your congregation, by common counsel, the one who by merit of life and by teaching of wisdom is proved more fit and more worthy to carry out such a ministry. These are the qualities which St. Benedict requires in choosing an abbot, in chapter 64 of the Rule. Abbot Ceolfrid, Biscop's successor, when about to cross the sea, gave the same instructions to his brethren: 'He decreed it more useful,' says Bede, a monk of the same congregation, in book 2, 'having given the brethren the precept that, according to the statutes of their own privilege and according to the Rule of the holy Abbot Benedict, they should choose from among their own number the father who might be more fit.'

Since the same venerable writer asserts in book 1 that Biscop handed on to his disciples that Rule which he had found in the seventeen monasteries he had visited—one of which was the monastery of St. Peter at Canterbury—it is most evident that long before his time the Rule of St. Benedict had been received and flourished in the monasteries of England. 7. No less strong an argument is drawn from the propagation of the Benedictine Rule in Germany and the neighbouring northern regions, through St. Boniface and other monks who set out from England to spread the Christian faith:

who indeed founded very many monasteries, chief among them the monastery of Fulda, most renowned not only in Germany but throughout all Europe, where no one denies that Benedictine observances flourished from the very beginning. Doubtless the same Rule which these heralds of the sacred word had received from their forefathers Augustine and his companions—disciples of Gregory the Great and alumni of the Roman monastery—they handed on to be observed in the ascetic houses they founded, and in following its institutions to the letter they persevered until death. To this belongs what we said in book 1, chapter 3, about the Rule of St. Benedict being taken up in the Roman monastery of St. Andrew, and observed by St. Gregory himself. 8.

Overcome by these reasons, the Bollandist fellows, though they had once followed the contrary opinion, at length of their own accord confessed that with the greatest probability, almost amounting to certainty, the Benedictines number Augustine and his companions among their own. And if it had befallen them to see the treatise of Eddius on the life of St. Wilfrid, praised above (for our Mabillon had not yet brought it out of obscurity when these learned men were writing), they would, with all doubt and wavering removed, have adjudged St. Augustine, apostle of the English, and his companions to the Benedictine family. 9. Quite otherwise indeed thinks John Marsham in the preface to the 'Monasticon Anglicanum'; who, although he admits that there was formerly among the English the greatest reverence for the Rule of St.

Benedict, yet contends that it was received in English monasteries only from the year 965, on account of the silence of the Synod of Cloveshoo and of the venerable Bede concerning this Rule. But we have already sufficiently dissolved these negative arguments, having brought forward indubitable testimonies about the Benedictine Rule, both from the aforesaid synod and from the venerable writer. Moreover Marsham strays altogether from historical truth when he asserts that before the tenth century the Rule of St. Benedict was unknown to English monasteries: how rashly this is said, John the Deacon alone shows in book 4, chapter 82, of the Life of St. Gregory: 'But as to the fact,' he says, 'that the monks who were sent by Gregory into Saxony' (that is, the transmarine or English Saxony)

were bound to the Rule of St. Benedict; this too, among other things, shows it: that among his disciples a monk can scarcely be found in those parts by whom the Rule of St. Benedict is not observed, both in his profession and in his habit.' John the Deacon was writing in the ninth century, nearly a hundred years before the Council of Winchester held in the year 965, in which Marsham judges that the reception of St. Benedict's Rule into English monasteries was dealt with; and already at that time the Rule of St. Benedict so prevailed everywhere in the monasteries of England that in all England scarcely one monk could be found who did not observe the laws of St. Benedict. Nor will anyone suppose that this was rashly asserted by John, the writer of the Life of St.

Gregory, if he has read without drowsiness the testimonies cited above from Aldhelm, Bede, Eddius, and the Council of Cloveshoo. Moreover it is established that John, in order to write about the deeds of St. Gregory, and especially about the English Church founded, governed, and propagated by his disciples, had procured for himself no perfunctory knowledge of English affairs: whence he could not have been ignorant of the laws by which the monasteries of England were bound. But of this argument more than enough; especially since the most learned Mabillon has occupied it. Now let us return to St. Gregory, exulting in the Lord over the converted English, and anxious to bring so great a work to completion. Argument. — 1.

Saint Gregory turns back upon others the praises due to himself for the conversion of the English. — 2. How greatly religion then flourished in England. — 3. The Pope grants certain indulgences to the newly converted. — 4. He orders the temples of idols to be consecrated with Christian rite. — 5. What feasts and love-feasts he allowed the neophytes. — 6. Augustine in vain invites the dissenting Britons to peace. They pay the penalty of their obstinacy. The death of Augustine, and his sacred cult after death. — 7. How much his successors laboured for the reconciliation of the Britons and Scots. — 8. Persecution rages against the Christian English. Which at length is quelled. — 9. The Britons receive the doctrine and rites of the Roman Church. A prayer for the conversion of the English of today. 1.

Having received news of what was being happily accomplished day by day by Augustine and his brethren in the English expedition, Gregory urged his friends by his letters to give thanks to God for so great a benefit. To St. Eulogius, from whom he had lately received the joyful tidings of the conversion of heretics and of the concord of Catholics, he writes thus: 'Since indeed I know that in the good things you do you rejoice together with others also, I return you like thanks, and I report things not unlike: for while the nation of the English, set in a corner of the world, remained faithless until now in the worship of wood and stone, it pleased me, with the aid of your prayer, that I should—God being the author—send a monk of my monastery to it for preaching' (Book

8, letter 30). He then relates by how many and how great miracles Augustine and his companions shone forth among the English; so that they seemed to imitate the virtues of the apostles in the signs which they displayed. 'I have related this,' he says, 'that you may know what you do among the people of Alexandria by preaching, and what you do at the ends of the world by praying. For your prayers are in that place where you are not, whose holy works are shown in the place where you are.' Thus the humble pontiff strove to deflect from himself the praises due for so great a work, and to turn them back upon any others whatsoever. 2. How greatly the Christian religion then flourished in Britain he expresses in these words:

'Behold, the tongue of Britain, which knew nothing but to gnash out barbarous sounds, has long since begun to resound the Hebrew Alleluia in the divine praises. Behold, the Ocean, once swelling, now lies subdued and serves at the feet of the saints; and its barbarous motions, which earthly princes had been unable to tame with the sword, these the lips of the priests, through the fear of God, bind fast with simple words: and he who, as an unbeliever, had by no means feared the throngs of warriors, now as a believer fears the tongues of the humble.'

'For because, upon receiving the heavenly words, and with miracles also shining forth, the power of divine knowledge is poured into him, he is restrained by the terror of that same Godhead, so that he fears to do wicked things, and with all his desires longs to attain the grace of eternity' (Moralia, book 27, no. 21). 3. Yet he indulged certain things in favour of the neophytes which the laws anciently received in the Church forbade; especially concerning the contracting of marriage within certain degrees of consanguinity and affinity: so that, newly born in Christ, they might gradually grow accustomed to His yoke; and lest harsher measures should compel the nation of the English to withdraw from the faith it had received (Book 11, letter 64).

This reason for the indulgence granted he himself brings forward in answering Felix, Bishop of Messina (Book 14, last letter), who was almost expostulating about this relaxation of the sacred law. Thus, having attained the highest authority in the Church, and knowing how to draw the reins tight and to give them loose, as it seemed expedient, the most prudent of pontiffs. 4. He had earlier decreed that the temples of idols should be overthrown; concerning which he had also written to Ethelbert (Book 11, letter 66); but, changing his counsel, he thought it better that these, with the idols destroyed and cast out, should be purified by the sprinkling of holy water, and consecrated with Christian rite; so that the English, newly called to the faith, might more familiarly resort to their accustomed places (Ibid., letter 76). 5.

It was the custom of the heathen, when they offered sacrifices to their idols, to slay many oxen and to feast upon them. In order to transfer this into a pious solemnity, the most holy Pope granted that on the day of the dedication of a church, or on the birthday of the holy martyrs whose relics were laid up in the new temples, the newly-made Christian English should make themselves tabernacles of tree-branches around those churches which had been changed from heathen shrines, and should celebrate the solemnity with religious feasts. 'For to hard minds,' he says, 'it is undoubtedly impossible to cut away all things at once: because he who strives to ascend to the highest place must needs be raised by steps or paces, and not by leaps' (Book 11, letter 76).